The editorial categories are research topics that have guided researchers during the recovery phase and continue to be the impetus behind the Documents Project’s digital archive and the Critical Documents book series. Developed by the project’s Editorial Board, each of the teams analyzed this framework and adapted it to their local contexts in developing their research objectives and work plans during the Recovery Phase. Learn more on the Editorial Framework page.

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Synopsis

This is Luis Camnitzer’s essay about his involvement in the NYGW (New York Graphic Workshop) presentation of prints inspired by the FANDSO [Free Assemblable Non-Functional Disposable Serial Object] Manifesto. Camnitzer’s goal is to re-define the concept of an engraving which, in his opinion, is “the product of a surface that creates identical images on a receiver by means of the repetition of ‘technical conditions’.” He refers to a variety of classifications, examples, and categories to explain FANDSO from both a technical and a conceptual point of view. He analyzes these ideas through the prisms of art history, psychology, and Marxist theory. In the long term, he concludes, making art is self-destructive.

Annotations

The essay by the Uruguayan artist Luis Camnitzer (b. 1937) about the NYGW (New York Graphic Workshop) exhibition—that included works by José Guillermo Castillo (Venezuela, b. 1938), Liliana Porter (Argentina, b. 1941), and Camnitzer—provides a thorough, first-hand analysis of the work inspired by the 1966 FANDSO Manifesto; it was published in the catalogue for the Liliana Porter exhibition (Buenos Aires: Centro Cultural Recoleta, 2004). In 1969, three years after it was published, Camnitzer clarifies his idea, suggesting conceptual and technical categories and following the idea through to its ultimate conclusions, meaning the self-destruction of the art object and the function of the artist. This document thus has an intrinsic meaning. Camnitzer, who was one of the founders of FANDSO, takes time to explain the concept in detail, justifying its meaning and projecting it into the future, just a few years after the idea was originally expressed in the manifesto. He also presents the concept of FANDSO for consideration in terms of theories associated with psychology, sociology, and art history. The essay provides an in-depth review of the concept, offers a conceptual proposition of art, and draws on the written word and the techniques of the publishing industry, using as support material the catalogue for the NYGW’s 1969 exhibition in Caracas.